The Musk acquisition of Twitter continues to panic the left
You can see what’s going on here:
While discussing the Musk take-over on CNN’s potato time with Brain Stelter, “media analyst” David Zurawik proclaimed that Musk is “dangerous” and shouldn’t be allowed to restore free speech on the platform.
Zurawik suggested that the U.S. look to Europe, which has recently brought in new laws to limit social media, and even threatened to ban Twitter if Musk doesn’t play ball.
“There’s a bigger problem here about how we’re going to control the channels of communications in this country,” Zurawik frothed, panicking at the notion of the likes of CNN not being able to dictate what Americans think.
Musk has them very very frightened. They are accustomed to having controlled the “narrative” for so many people for so long that the prospect of losing at least some of that control is terrifying them and causing them to want to clamp down further.
I keep wondering whether they believe in their own virtue and self-righteousness, or whether that’s an act and they are simply Machiavellian. I suppose the answer isn’t all that important – what matters is the damage they have done and are still trying to do – but I continue to wonder. I suspect it’s about 50/50: half believe in their own virtue and half do not.
50/50 does not matter. All 100%, their totality, is evil. Does how they got there really matter when you are about to put a gun to their head and execute them? What matters is they have become what they are: Evil.
And they’ll do it to you, no qualms involved.
I think the virtue/Machiavelli split is more like 80/20 or worse in the favor of obliviousness.
To me, the giveaway is how much these people believe in and cling to old and new institutions like the New York Times and Twitter. Cold-blooded manipulators don’t desperately crave outside validation and guidance. They may seek to make use of it, but they don’t become slaves to it.
You can look at the Twitter meltdown over the idea that other voices might no longer be censored or diminished. Or you can look at the NYT’s latest nonsense about Tucker Carlson promoting white supremacy. Carlson is the most-watched cable news host in prime time. He normally doubles, triples, and even quadruples what any primetime host on CNN or MSNBC does in the 25-54 demographic. Yet, how much less of a freakout is there over the most popular person in cable news allegedly being a white supremacist? How many Democrats just read that story and basically shrug it off as no big deal?
They don’t think it’s a big deal because the only purpose the story has to them is to buttress their feeling of moral and spiritual superiority. The practical implications of an alleged white supremacist being the most powerful voice in cable news completely escape them.
Mike
Some of them have come to believe in their virtue because their system has been able to eliminate any contesting views that might challenge them. And now, instead of expanding their minds with true intellectual diversity, they prefer instead to bask in their manufactured social media echo chamber – where Right Thinking is Our Business, 24 / 7! .
Glad to see Musk stirring things up.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton it depends on what the meaning of “believe” is. I suspect many of them have talked themselves into believing they are on the side of what is good and righteous. Even Obama probably believes a lot of his own BS. He certainly has the narcissistic personality for it.
But as neo suggests it may not matter. To go full Godwin even Hitler believed he was “right”.
I generally subscribe to Hanlon’s razor “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”, but I don’t comletely rule out malice. I think much of the talking heads in the leftist media are probably mostly fools rather than knaves. But I think that there are also a lot of powerful evil people behind the scenes.
For example, it’s pretty obvious that characters like George Soro’s are vile human beings who want to reduce, destroy, and remake America and the West. But Brian Stelter seems like more of a gormless ninny than some calculating villian. He’s probably at least dimmly aware that much of what he’s peddling are easily discredited lies, he’s just not aware of how destructive the narratives he pushes can be.
“I keep wondering whether they believe in their own virtue and self-righteousness, or whether that’s an act and they are simply Machiavellian.”
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, per se. One can believe sincerely in the leftist project and that one is brilliant, virtuous and compassionate, on the ‘right side of history’ but also want to accumulate and maintain power for personal gain and glory. That, I think, is the worldview of much of the lefty ‘elite’ in media, entertainment, government and academia.
Not Stelter though. The guy is an utter moron. There’s no way he’s reflective enough to consider anything I outlined above. He just does what he’s told, because it’s what he knows. There’s no depth behind it.
“But Brian Stelter seems like more of a gormless ninny than some calculating villian.”
Yep. I can’t help but wonder, in my unserious moments, if Stelter is a conservative plant, a double agent who infiltrated CNN to make its content look dumber (quite the feat!) and provide mild entertainment for the right.
About 85% of my social circle (where I know their politics) are liberal or leftist. I have never heard any of them mention watching Stelter or post anything from his show. But I do see conservatives post him frequently…for a cheap laugh.
Keep saying the self-deception is necessary among the rest of the supporters. The ordinary lefty voters and “no-hate” sign cohort.
Without them, the bigshot machiavellians would be out by themselves.
There is regular reader/ commenter on the Fox News Website who post under the name of “Nathan Bedford”, and even has the historical Nathan Bedford picture, the Nathan Bedford that was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. The guy really dislikes Trump. Today, he was complaining about the racist comments about the “13%” and crime. And yeah, some of the commenters are pretty hard on blacks and crime rates. But a guy calling himself “ Nathan Bedford”, complaining about Trump and racist…
All of the non fox networks are full of fools like f chuck scary larry joyless reid tater is just more ovoid than most
People who have power don’t give it up willingly. The leftist media has had great power over flow of information and opinion in America, and they have apparently gotten into the habit of thinking of twitter as, in some sense, their property.
No one is threatening *their* freedom of speech, but empowering of others reduces their relative power.
See my related post The Rage of the Prince-Electors:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67520.html
Another vote against Machiavelianism is the apparent leak from someone inside the Supreme Court of a decision overturning Roe v Wade. Someone may be destroying a couple centuries of precedent and their own future in any sort of serious legal field to accomplish…what?
To intimidate the Justices to NOT overturn Roe? And thereby not only pump more gas into the GOP get-out-the-vote machine this November but utterly trash any credibility the Court still possesses among conservatives? On the other hand, a Roe reversal might be the only thing that could save the Democrats from electoral annihilation this year.
Mike
They want to burn down the court, because it has sometimes upheld the wall against the progressive tsunami although they were brutally derelict in 2012 and 2020.
Obamacare and the stolen election, the war is here ladies and gentleman not 3,000 miles away
“They want to burn down the court”
Well, they’ll get their wish. This leak, if it’s accurate, is possibly the most outrageous and damning betrayal of U.S. legal community ethics in history. Even John Roberts is going to be enraged by this and he’ll be joined by any pundit or legal thinker out there who even pretends to believe in judicial independence and integrity.
This is the Left almost literally declaring war on the U.S. federal court system. Even most NeverTrump jagoffs will choke on this.
Mike
They’ll stop at nothing. Ne’er a consequence.
A possible leaker is amit jain a yale law graduate cited by gerstein in 2017, a sotomayor clerk
Yep
https://mobile.twitter.com/beyondreasdoubt/status/1521309277624971264?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
If the vote (say again, if) was 5-4 yesterday it ought to be 6-3 tomorrow should CJ Roberts intend to see justice done. And that quite apart from seeking to find, prosecute and punish the actual leaker(s). But watch, he’ll do nothing of the sort.
Dread pirate roberts, not my coinage nah
“…intimidation…”
Yep, intimidation and harassment have become cutting-edge morality for the Democrats and their enablers.
The violence provided by their antifa stormtroopers simply ices the cake as far as they’re concerned. (Antifa is of course only an “idea”…)
How many justices are going to receive photos of their kids or grandkids on the bus stop? Two? Three?
}}} I keep wondering whether they believe in their own virtue and self-righteousness, or whether that’s an act and they are simply Machiavellian. I suppose the answer isn’t all that important – what matters is the damage they have done and are still trying to do – but I continue to wonder. I suspect it’s about 50/50: half believe in their own virtue and half do not.
I think you need to do a trinary breakdown, Neo:
1 — Just in it for the power — — this bunch is the high level movers and shakers, with a good chunk of Antifa types.
2 — power is important for my team, but “virtue” is just as important — this is the rest of Antifa.
3 — Virtue! Virtue! Virtue! — this group is mostly a collection of “useful idiots”.
Now, the key thing to grasp is that “losing power” to class three is not virtuous, because you lose the ability to impose your virtues on others.
So power is central to all three, but it is a question of how overt and how self-deluding they are about it.
That said, my breakdown would be
1 — 15%
2 — 25%
3 — 60%
Class three is the mobocracy. They’re the ones who rabidly try and stomp on anyone outside the herd. Often they are “given direction” (aka: “Look at THIS!! What a bastard!”) by the other two.
OBloody:
We don’t differ too much on this, because I lump groups 1 and 2 together on the Machiavellian side.
It is impossible to be virtuous without humility. Genuine humility is the foundational virtue. Genuine humility recognizes that we are all flawed, foolish, ignorant and often do and believe stupid things. It recognizes that we are all corrupted by power. And genuine humility recognizes the humanity of those who disagree with us.
I don’t know of any liberals/Democrats/progressives/marxists/leftists on the current American political scene who have demonstrated any genuine humility.
All of them that I am aware of crave political power because they desire to play God with other people’s lives. And that is the beginning of the path to embracing evil.
All of them have been corrupted by the thirst for power. All of them have been corrupted into believing that they are special, that they are better than other people, that they are more moral, and that they deserve to rule others and dictate how others live. (One could argue that this attitude is the essence of lefty politics.)
All of them that I have observed have “othered” the people who do not agree with them. They have drunk the kool-aid that those who disagree are racist, sexist, etc. That those who disagree with them are bad people. Undeserving people. People who deserve to be punished. People who deserve to be ruled. Need to be ruled. And denied access to power. Lefties are morally defective.
Sorry if this seems harsh, but these people ARE evil. Based on what they do. On what they say they support and want. On how they treat others.